Digital Government, Solidarity and Social Cohesion

Description

Solidarity is a unity of feeling among people sharing a common objective or interest, despite their logical differences and inequalities. A key measure for building social cohesion, particularly in deeply divided societies, it embodies human rights, active citizenship, inclusion, equity, empathy and ethics. Government has a profound impact on solidarity and social cohesion. Still, this impact can be double-edged: government policy can help increase social solidarity and cohesion, but too much reliance on the government to solve society’s problems and organize citizens’ lives can lead to a breakdown of social solidarity and cohesion.

Digitizing government adds new layers of complexity to this relation: it can scale up the positive impact of government on solidarity, but it can also scale up polarization and impair government efficacy. On the other hand, solidarity can enhance digital government by triggering technological innovation, e.g., create tools for vulnerable citizens during a crisis, or become a goal for such innovation, e.g., foster the more equitable distribution of resources. Thus the relationships between digital government, solidarity and social cohesion is rich and intense.

This track aims to unravel some of the open questions regarding such relationships. Key among them is how digital government can enhance solidarity and social cohesion and, conversely, how solidarity and social cohesion can enhance the efficacy of the government’s digital agenda and the efficacy of digital government itself. We welcome submissions on those questions. The topics include but are not limited to:

• Digital transformation building vs. breaking social ties
• Digital transformation impacting social cohesion
• Digital transformation impacting social polarization
• Digital transformation impacting equity and inclusion
• Digital transformation, beyond mechanical and organic solidarity
• Value-driven and anthropocentric digital transformation for solidarity
• Digital transformation ethics for solidarity
• From digital transformation to digital solidarity
• Digital solidarity, technological self-determination and strategic autonomy
• Digital governance for social, civil, political and international solidarity
• Digital agenda for solidarity and solidarity for digital agenda
• Digital tools, policies and institutions for solidarity
• Solidarity-based digital tools, policies and institutions
• Social media manipulation (hate speech, fake news, etc.) and solidarity impact
• Anti-solidarity political narratives on digital platforms
• Active digital citizenship countering anti-solidarity narratives
• Digital solidarity vs. digital sovereignty
• Digital capacity building and education for solidarity
• Institution building for digital solidarity
• Digital transformation of mutual aid institutions
• Case studies on digital agenda in deeply polarized societies
• Case studies on digital agenda and generational, gender, refugee, etc. solidarity
• Solidarity lessons learnt from epidemics, war and other crises

Important Dates

June 15: Paper Submission Deadline (11:59 pm HST)
August 17: Notification of Acceptance/Rejection to be sent to authors
September 22: Deadline for authors to submit final manuscript for publication
October 1: Deadline for at least one author of each paper to register for the conference
Mini-track co-chairs

 

Mini-track co-chairs

David Duenas-Cid
Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland
Email: david.duenas.cid@pg.edu.pl

Elsa Estevez
Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina and
National Research Council for Scientific and Technological Research, Argentina
Email: ecestevez@gmail.com

Tomasz Janowski (primary contact)
Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland and
University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria
Email: tomasz.janowski@pg.edu.pl

Minitrack Leaders

Elsa Estevez is the chair holder of the UNESCO Chair on Knowledge Societies and Digital Governance at Universidad Nacional del Sur, an Independent Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), and Full Professor at the National University of La Plata, all in Argentina. She is also a consultant for Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) on the matters of digital government, particularly in Latin America. Previously, she was a Senior Academic Program Officer and Academic Program Officer at the United Nations University (UNU) in Macao and Portugal; Visiting Professor at the National University of Rio Negro, Argentina; Gdansk University of Technology, Poland; University of Minho, Portugal; and head of Information Technology (IT) departments in large financial and pharmaceutical organizations in Argentina. She consulted for governments, taught to public managers and policy makers, and organized events about digital government in over 30, mostly developing countries. Her research interests cover the structuring of the information technology function in government, digital transformation of government-citizen relationships, and the impact of such transformation on nations' and cities' capacity to pursue sustainable development. She has a PhD in Computer Science from Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina.